Matthew Macklin vs. Sergio Martinez still being shown on HBO on March 17th

By Boxing News - 01/10/2012 - Comments

Image: Matthew Macklin vs. Sergio Martinez still being shown on HBO on March 17thBy William Mackay: For now, the March 17th fight between former WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (48-2-2, 27 KO’s) and Matthew Macklin (28-3, 19 KO’s) will still be televised by HBO. It’s still unknown if that will change because Martinez recently lit into HBO about having his World Boxing Council stripped from him by the WBC due to Martinez not defending his belt against No.1 ranked challenger Sebastian Zbik.

Martinez instead fought previously unbeaten Sergiy Dzinziruk, the guy that HBO wanted him to fight after they rejected the idea of showing Martinez’s planned title defense against Zbik. That moved ultimately caused Martinez to lose his title and he’s not been happy about it ever since.

Martinez recently said this about HBO in an interview at RingTV “I don’t agree with what HBO did with me, and that’s why I’m leaving them at HBO. You know for a boxer, it might be harder to say no to HBO and to the WBC, but there are a lot of changes today with HBO and with the Showtime boxing people.”

Martinez was supposed to be meeting with HBO executives to speak with them about the latest issues that he’s been having. If Martinez doesn’t work things out with HBO, then he’ll likely be moving on to Showtime. Whether this fight will still be televised is unclear but for now it’s still scheduled for HBO.

Macklin, 29, is coming off a disappointing 12 round split decision loss to WBA World middleweight champion Felix Sturm last June. It was a close fight but Macklin ran out of gas in the last six rounds and was punching without much power. He and his fans feel that he won because he landed more shots.

However, Sturm was landing the much cleaner shots all night long and especially in the second of the fight. Macklin as really dragging and looked red in the face from exhaustion. He briefly attempted to arrange a rematch with Sturm, but quickly gave up when he discovered that Sturm reportedly wanted a percentage of his future earnings before he’d agree to fight him.

Martinez has fought only once since being stripped of his title by the WBC. He beat Darren Barker by an 11th round knockout last October. It was a good fight but Martinez was fighting a reluctant opponent in Barker who appeared to be just trying to survive and not win the fight.



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